


Memory Revises

by voleuse



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-26
Updated: 2005-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>I'm the only one who's lived to tell it, and I confuse the details.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory Revises

**Author's Note:**

> Set pre-series, vague spoilers for the series. No movie spoilers. Title and summary adapted from _Furious Versions_ by Li-Young Lee.

Once in a great while, they leave her alone in her cell. Let her wounds stich together, before they tear her flesh apart again.

River tries to think, then, think of a way to escape.

She can't. Thought drains from her like blood.

*

 

When River was little, even littler than now, Anh-Nga, one of the girls from the kitchen, would whisper to her over the counter about the Reavers. Anh-Nga didn't know half as many words as she should have, and she sometimes slipped into her own dialect, but she was a good storyteller, and River picked up enough to understand.

_And they screamed, so loud_, Anh-Nga would whisper, _but their ship was caught. They couldn't escape_.

_Did they die?_ River would ask. _Did the Reavers eat them up?_

_Parts of them_, Anh-Nga would say. And her knife went _chop chop chop_ on the cutting board, ripping mushrooms and water chestnuts into threads. _Chop chop chop_, and then Anh-Nga jabbed, stabbed the point of the knife into an onion. _The sweet parts._

River would widen her eyes, bare her teeth. Laugh a little, because nobody eats _people_.

River got in trouble, whenever they found her in the kitchen, but she couldn't stay away.

*

 

The pain doesn't let her think. Not just from the stitches, the surgeries, the scalpels, but everything else, every_one_ else, and she can't concentrate.

She can't...

It's the food. She thinks it's the food, it would make sense that it's the food.

So she stops eating. Easy as that. Easy as...something. There was something.

Things get clearer, for a while, even the pain, but it's sharper, lets her see.

Third day in, though, they come into her cell with needles gleaming like teeth, teeth gleaming like needles, and she fights, kicks, but they hold her down and bite.

She wakes later, screams and screams, until she can't think clearly, but it doesn't matter.

She couldn't think clearly, anyway.

*

 

The bodies are tied together, arranged in tiers like the chandelier in the ballroom.

This happened before. Or maybe after. It's hard for her to tell.

She remembers the ballroom, though. She begged and begged Mama to let her stay up late for the party, and finally, Mama consented. Bought her a pretty dress and prettier shoes, made her sit still for _hours_ while they curled her hair tame.

And she took Papa's hand as they walked into the ballroom, stared at the shiny floor, then up and up into the lights. Blood dripped onto the floor, and everything smelled like meat.

Or maybe that hasn't happened yet.

*

 

_That never happened_, they whisper in her ear. _You were never at that party. You were never a little girl_.

_No_, she tells them.

_There was no Mama. No Papa. No ballroom. No Anh-Nga._

_There was_, she insists.

_You were never anything but this. You have always been here._

She pulls against her bindings. Struggles, even as the familiar whine of the drill starts, and the pressure builds in her mind again.

She tells herself it was all real, it will all be real.

And the darkness unhinges its maw.


End file.
